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marees terrestres bulletin d'informations - Université de la Polynésie ...

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is done with an optical lever using a small mirror mounted on the weight. Using this mechanical-optical<br />

extensometer, Sassa first succee<strong>de</strong>d to observe the tidal strain changes of the Earth in Ikuno and Makimine<br />

stations in 1943. Accordingly, the experimental investigation of the strain-tensor components of Earth ti<strong>de</strong>s<br />

started. Sassa and Ozawa installed the same type extensometer in Osakayama Observatory in 1947 and<br />

continued long-term tidal strain measurements. They first reported these result of tidal strain measurements at<br />

the IAG General Assembly held in Brussels in1951 (Sassa et al.(1952) and Ozawa (1952)).<br />

Izuo Ozawa <strong>de</strong>vised many kinds of mechanical extensometers with photographic recording systems.<br />

Figure 7 shows a high-sensitive super-invar bar extensometer with magnifier of Zollner suspension type<br />

(Ozawa, 1961). He continued precise tidal strain measurements in Osakayama, Kishu and Suhara in Japan<br />

over many years. In 1971, a super-invar bar extensometer of Ozawa type was installed in the Walferdange<br />

<strong>la</strong>boratory in Luxembourg (Ozawa et al., 1973). This instrument was used to estimate the l/h ratio (Melchior<br />

and Ducarme, 1976).<br />

Figure 7. Schematic representation of a super-invar bar extensometer with magnifier of Zollner suspension<br />

type <strong>de</strong>signed by I. Ozawa (left) and example of tidal strain records (right).<br />

A continuous monitoring of crustal movements by tiltmeters and strainmeters has been consi<strong>de</strong>red to be<br />

an effective measure of earthquake precursors particu<strong>la</strong>rly on short time scales of hours to days. An early<br />

contribution in such an approach was due to Sassa and Nishimura (1951). They first reported anomalous<br />

changes of ground-strains and tilts observed before occurrences of some <strong>de</strong>structive earthquakes at<br />

observatories located near the source regions. Among them, a typical example was a precursory tilting motion<br />

associated with the 1943 Tottori earthquake of M=7.2. During 6 hours prior to the occurrence of the<br />

earthquake, an anomalous tilting motion with the or<strong>de</strong>r of 0.1” (0.5 μ rad.) was observed with a tiltmeter of<br />

the horizontal pendulum type installed at 800m un<strong>de</strong>r the ground surface in Ikuno mine located about 60km<br />

away from the epicenter. Although there remained some uncertainties to conclu<strong>de</strong> it as a precursor, it p<strong>la</strong>yed<br />

an important role in Japan for promoting the national project for earthquake prediction which started in 1965.<br />

Since then, many observatories and supplementary stations for monitoring crustal movements have been<br />

established in Japan. More than 100 stations are operating un<strong>de</strong>r the national project for earthquake prediction.<br />

Despite such a <strong>de</strong>nse arrangement of stations equipped with improved instruments, we have not been able to<br />

<strong>de</strong>tect “reliable precursors” immediately before the occurrence of earthquakes.<br />

In the early morning of January 17, 1995 (in Japanese Standard Time), a <strong>de</strong>structive earthquake of<br />

M w =6.9 occurred near the Kobe City. The <strong>de</strong>ath toll from the earthquake reached more than 6,300 due to<br />

col<strong>la</strong>pse of buildings and bridges, fires and diseases induced by the earthquake. We have carried on<br />

continuous observation of crustal strains with a <strong>la</strong>ser strainmeter at the Rokko-Takao station in Kobe since<br />

1989 (Takemoto et al., 1998b, 2003). The distance from the station to the epicenter is about 20 km and the<br />

station is located almost above the fault p<strong>la</strong>ne. Based on the <strong>la</strong>ser strainmeter data, we searched for anomalous<br />

strain changes before and after the earthquake mainly focusing to the period of one week before the<br />

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